The True Game Read online

  I knew I was right when he came to my blanket to offer me a wineskin, saying, "Some of the vintage we carry to the cities away west. Not that stuff we've been drinking. No. Something very special. Thought you'd enjoy it." Smile, smile, smile. I smiled stuporously in return, took the wineskin and laid it beside me.

  "Generous of you, Trader. Generous. I'll have a sip of it in a bit. Oh, yes, soon as this last bit settles." I laughed a little, let my eyes close as though I were too drowsy to stay awake, watching him from beneath my lids. The smiling mouth of him snarled, then took up its perpetual cheer.

  "Sleep well," he wished me. "Drink deep, and sleep well."

  "Ah, yes, yes, I will. I will, indeed." If I drank his gift, I would probably not wake, I told myself. How in the name of Towering Tamor was I to get out of this?

  A little time went by. Darkness settled. I heard someone going by the place I lay and reached out to catch an ankle. It was Izia, and she crouched beside me saying, "What would you, fool?"

  "Izia, I may be a fool indeed to ask you, but-am I in danger?"

  "Oh, poor fool, you are. And I may not aid you unless I die in more agony than you have ever felt." She took my hand and laid it upon her boot, high upon her leg, and held it there. Long moments went by. Then I heard Laggy Nap call from the wain, call her name, once, again, and beneath my hand the boot began to burn like fire. I drew my hand away with a harsh exclamation.

  "I come," she called in a clear voice, then knelt to hiss into my ear. "You see, fool. We obey. We obey, obey, obey. Or we burn."

  4

  Befriend the Shadows

  When the camp came awake in the morning, I pretended a headache and staggering incompetence. During the long waking hours I had decided that Laggy Nap was unsure of my powers, my Talents, and would therefore probably (though not certainly) decide not to attack me directly. No, he would attempt something else, something sly and sneaking like the drugged wine I was sure he had already offered me or, if he wanted me dead, some sneaking murder. So, I decided to appear no threat to him while I found a little time to design some strategy to protect my life. I knew Izia would say nothing. In this I was correct. For the first time I was able to interpret the discipline around me correctly. It was all fear and pain, simply that. Laggy Nap had some mental link or some other control of the boots they wore. The wearer of those boots did Nap's will or burned. I was led to a remembrance of the devices which Nitch had sewn into my tunic the year before. Were not these torture boots something of the same kind? And were both not similar to the things Mandor had said were Huld's?

  Well, the provenance of the things did not matter at the moment. My life did. Therefore I staggered and sweated and even managed to vomit in the bushes. Truth to tell, I felt sick enough, though it was not winesickness but strain and fear. Oh, yes, I was fearful. In the night hours I had reached for Dorn. He had come into my mind slowly, reluctantly, murmuring "Necromancer nine, Peter, Necromancer nine." I could get nothing else out of him, and I bad not needed that warning that I was at grave risk. I had already figured that out for myself.

  It was not long until Nap confronted me with a false smile and prying questions. Had I drunk the special wine he had given me last night? I answered with vague noddings, sick grins, avowals that one more drop of anything would have killed me indeed. He got no satisfaction, and I knew it would not be more than a few hours before he would try something again. Let him think me an idiot. I did not think much better of myself.

  I needed some other Talent, and this made me fretful, weighing and discarding notion after notion. I could shift into some other form if I left my horse and all belongings behind me. I was reluctant to do that. There was a great distance still to travel, I thought. Instinct told me that Trandilar would not move Nap. He was of a kind impervious to the beguilement of others. He was also of a kind who would not be fearful of the dead. Therefore some other Talent. Not Elator, as that would lose me horse and gear, and Elators could only move themselves between known locations. I knew no location forward on the journey, so any move would lose me leagues already traveled. Armiger? Again, horse and gear lost if I flew away. The Talents of Fire? Or Healing? What good were these to me? A Demon's Talent for Reading? Perhaps, if that would let me know what was in Nap's mind. Musing thus, I rode along beside the icy little wagon, seeing the mist rise from it like the mists far behind me in the Bright Demesne. Nothing presented itself as a good strategy. All seemed forced, difficult, possibly dangerous. .

  Then I saw the cliffs ahead of us, looming against the lowering sky, for it had been chill and rainy during the early hours and was only now clearing. Cliffs, crumbly at the rim, trailing away in long talus slopes at their bases. An idea began to form, slowly, only bones of thought still to become fleshed and finished. The sun came from behind the clouds, hot and impatient. I reached into the pouch at my belt and found the little image of Shattnir, First Sorcerer, great lady of Power. She did not speak to me as the others had done. Instead, she flowed into my veins and across my skin, bound me around with her net, tied me into her being, and began to take the heat from the sun and place it somewhere within. I could feel it building within me, a tightness, as though my skin were stretched and swollen. I knew my eyes were bulging and my lips turning outward, puffed, but my reflection in the polished harness plate between the horse's ears showed no change in my appearance. 'Not too much," I begged silently. "Enough, Shattnir, but not too much." She did not listen but went on taking the power from the bright sky, more and more and more, until at last I gave up waiting to explode and let her find room for it all. When I quit holding my breath, the swollen feeling abated slightly, and evidently there was room for it all for we rode so until the mountains rose across the sun to make a long, violet-gray shade for our stopping place.

  The fires were lit, the silent pawns began their evening chores and routines. Izia moved among the horses, examining their hooves, stroking their glossy hides, murmuring to them. I excused myself to go away from the camp, unsurprised when one of the booted men followed me. I did not go into the copse, however, but up the rocky slope against the cliff, stumbling a little on the scree, seeing loose bits of it slide and rattle beneath my feet with hopeful satisfaction. There was a hollow there, a place where a piece of the cliff had broken away from the main mass leaving a narrow space behind it, no larger than a closet. I eased myself within, watching my follower peering after me. Well enough.

  I reached into the pouch and took the image of Wafnor into my hand, first and greatest Tragamor. I became a room into which a man with a cheerful face entered, laughing, grasping the hands of those there with a fond greeting. Almost I could hear him, "Dorn, Trandilar, Shattnir, how well you all look. Oh, it is good to see my friends again." And then he was at my side saying, "And what have we to do?"

  Perhaps I told him, perhaps he simply knew. I cannot really describe what it is like. Sometimes it is like telling another person something, sometimes it is like talking to oneself, sometimes simply like knowing. Within me I felt his arms reach up, up along the cliff face, higher and higher to the rimrock fifty manheights or more above, to grasp the stones there and move them, one, two, a dozen, slowly down and down until they began to roll and fall, to tumble clacking against others, knocking,, more and more, down, an avalanche of stone, toward my hidden closet behind the stone, a rumbling roar as I shrieked to the man who watched me, "Look out! Rock fall!" One glimpse of his face, a white oval around the round hole of a dark scream.

  Then I could feel nothing and hear nothing except the grating roar of the stones. Still Wafnor reached out to them, stacking this one and that one as they fell, arranging them over me, over and around like a cave while outside the shuddering cave the stones still fell for long moments into a shattered silence.

  There were cracks among the stones around me, little crevices to let in the air and the sound. Through these I could hear the whinnying of beasts, snorts, cries of men, Izia's scream as she tugged animals away from the tumbling stones.
Wafnor reached out once more, across the camp to the place my horse was tethered with my pack and saddle still upon him, urged him away into the trees, out of sight of the camp. calmed the horse there to wait for me. Then Wafnor did nothing, I did nothing, and we merely waited and listened to the sounds.

  "Where is he?" Laggy Nap, raging.

  A voice in answer, shaky, almost hysterical. "I don't know. He was against the rock, up in there, and it came down on top of him. He screamed at me to look out. You heard him scream. It came down right on top of him .. buried .. covered over.

  "Devils take it," Nap screamed. "What started the fail?"

  "Just started. Nothing. Didn't see anything. No people, nothing moving. No thunder, nothing like that. Just started ..

  "Shadow men? Did you see shadow men?"

  "Nothing, sir. Nothing at all. He screamed, and the rocks were coming down."

  Nap once more, this time strident, calling in his servitors. "Get up here, you lot. We'll have to dig him out!" He sounded frantic. Dig me out? And why? This was unexpected, but Wafnor did not seem disturbed. He reached high once again, sent a few small stones cascading at Nap's feet, followed by a medium-sized boulder or two. High above I could feel Wafnor's hands upon the megalith, swaying it.

  "Get back, get back. The whole wall looks to come down. Oh, why did he come up here against the wall. Izia! Did he say anything to you?"

  Her voice. "You know he did not, sir. He has said nothing to me out of your hearing. And now he is dead.

  "I was told to bring him," Nap snarled. "Bring him to the west, to Tallman and the mumble-mouths. How can I go empty-handed?"

  "Why would they do anything to you? It is not your fault the cliff fell. It is ill luck, but not your doing."

  "I have had ill luck since the Shifter sold you to me, fool. Ill luck all the years of our travel. I would you were dead beneath that rock instead of the one I was told to bring." I heard the sound of a blow, a scream, then long silence.

  A man's voice at last. "Surely even they understand things that happen which are not foreseen."

  "Which are nor foreseen! Yes! But which should have been foreseen. I will demand they give a Seer to serve me. Perhaps more than one. When we arrive, I will demand .."

  "Do we continue on this road, sir?"

  "No. This road goes nowhere. We came this way only to follow that troublesome Necromancer, that death's-head, that son of a loathsome toad. Oh, I came this way only to trap him, and now he is trapped too deep for me to reach! We go back to River Haws, and north almost to Hell's Maw, then west by Cagihiggy water. We can take no time for food. We go now!"

  I heard a voice saying something weary and hopeless about Hell's Maw, and the sound of another blow. Then were the rattle of harness, the creaking of wheels, the voices of men and one woman dying away to the east, gone. Then long gone. I waited, not moving. Nap was tricky. He might think to leave someone to watch. Night came. I slept. Morning came, and Wafnor moved the stones aside. I was born into the world like a revenant to a Necromancer's call, squinting in the sun. When I whistled, my horse came from the trees where Wafnor had held him throughout the night. We needed water, he and I, and only when that was taken care of did we ride on to the west. I should have been cheered, but was not. My escape, my safety were shadowed by Izia's continuing captivity, and she was in my mind during the morning hours, so much so that at last I decided it would do her no good, nor me, this brooding. So, I set my mind firmly upon Mavin's words, "Befriend the shadows." Come evening, I would try to do her bidding.

  The way led upward. From a lonely height I could look back along the trail to see a small trail of dust on the eastern horizon.

  Was that Laggy Nap? Izia? Was there something I should have done which I had not? Within me was a kind of consultation. and voices came to tell me there was nothing I could have done, not then, that there were more urgent things for me to do. Still, I felt the queasiness of one who leaves a needful task undone. Though I tried not to think of her, she was much in my mind.

  And still in my mind in the evening. I watched from beside my fire, waiting for evidence of shadow men. I saw nothing, heard nothing except an occasional interruption of insect sounds as though something might have walked among them. Morning came, gray and dripping, and I rode on west to another evening and another fire. I reached out to Trandilar, begged her for a blandishment, a beguilement to charm birds, small beasts, whatever might be within sight or smell of me. She let it flow through me and breathe into the air, a perfume, a subtle fragrance of desire. Watching quiet greeted it, a silent attention. I could not say how I knew they were there, but I knew it. I slept at last, weary with waiting for them to come to me.

  In the morning I journeyed beside a stream which became a small river. I had come high onto a tilted upland that slanted down toward the west, and the river I followed was fed from all sides by swiftly flowing rivulets making conversational noises over the polished stones of their beds. By day's end I began to smell something strange, a vast wetness, like that of the Gathered Waters, but different in some way I could not describe. Suddenly, the air before me was full of rainbows, the river plunged away through a notch in the land, and I could see the waters below, a mighty sea stretching beyond sight into the west. The evening wind was in my face, thrusting the waters onto the beach below in long combers of white. A twisting path wound down the face of the cliffs, and at the bottom the beaches reached away north and south in a smooth curve into which the elevated land behind me dropped and vanished. Some little distance to the north was an inlet bordered with trees, a grassy bank, a pool of still water over which white flowers nodded their heads and devil's needles dipped glassy wings. The horse stumbled with tiredness; I licked lips wet with salt and almost fell when I dismounted. There was no sound but water talk, yet I knew something was watching me, had been watching me for days. I was too weary to eat so only pulled the saddle from the horse and rolled myself into a blanket to sleep dreamlessly.

  It was dark when I woke, dark lit by a half moon. Some sound had wakened me, some cry. I stared across the moonlit waters to see a boat, a long, low boat like those carried on larger ships. It seemed empty, but I had heard a cry. The boat showed only as an outline against a kind of glow, a subtle luminescence, nebulous and equivocal. It drifted toward me, grated on the pebbles of the beach and rocked there, each wave threatening to carry it out once more. In my sleep-befuddled mind it seemed fortuitous, a boat to carry me west. I stumbled out of my blanket, still half asleep, intending to pull the boat further onto the shore.

  Then, as I stumbled toward the boat, an anguished keening came out of the dark, and I was stopped, unable to move further. There were little arms about my legs, thrusting me back, tugging at me, moving me away from the boat. Between me and the impalpable glow, I could see their figures outlined. Two or three of them carried something among them, a balk of timber perhaps-something bulky. They went close to the boat, heaved their burden high and ran wildly away. The bulky burden fell within the boat.

  And the boat tilted upward, rose into the air, became the end of an enormous pillar to which it was attached, a monstrous, flexible arm upon which it was only a leaf-shaped tip, one among many mighty tentacles thrashing upward in a maelstrom of sinew to tangle themselves around the "boat" and carry it beneath the surface. The little fingers pushed me back, back, and from the waters those tentacles came once more, questing across the pebbles with palpable anger to find the prey they had been denied. Against the watery glow I thought I saw a nimbus outlining an eye, rounder than the moon and as cold, peering enormously at the small shadowy figures which capered on the pebbled shore and hooted as they danced.

  They were quadrumanna, the four-handed ones, shadow people, silky-furred, with ears like delicate wings upon their heads and sharp little teeth which glinted in the half light of the stars. All through the hooting and warbling they never ceased to tug at me, back away from the water's edge, back to the place I had slept. As we went they acted out the
rage of the water creature. letting their long, supple arms twist like the tentacles, dropping them onto the pebbles in an excess of artful rage. "Hoc, hoc, boor, ocr, ocr." Others gathered from the streamside until I was surrounded by a jigging multitude. All sleep had been driven away. I fed sticks into a hastily kindled fire, watching the celebration.

  One of them brought me a fruit, which I ate, and this moved others to bring me bits of this and that, some of which smelled and tasted good, others which I could not bring myself to put in my mouth. They learned quickly. If I rejected a thing, they brought no more of it. After a time the excitement dwindled. and they gathered in crouching rows to watch me. I reached to the nearest, patted-him (or her, or it) saying, "Friend." They liked that. Several mimicked my word in my own voice, and others took it up, "Friend, rend, end, end, end." At this, a silvery one from among them was moved to stand and come to my side, to strike his chest with an open hand. "Proom," he said. "Proom. Proom."

  I tapped his chest, said "Proom," then struck my own. "Peter."

  "Peter, eater, ter, ter," they murmured, enchanted.

  The grizzled one waved at the waters, at the tremulous surface, mimed a swimming stroke, raised his hands in the writhing mime of tentacles. "D'bor."

  I pointed to the waves and repeated the word. He nodded. It seemed to be going well from his point of view.

  "D'bor, nononononono," he said proudly, miming swimming once more. "nonononono."

  I laughed. "Nonononono." I agreed, at which we both nodded, satisfied. Mavin's words came to me. "Walk on fire, but do not swim in water." Surely. Water was a nonononono.

  Well then, walk on fire I would, if I could find any. I fed sticks to the fire, building the blaze high, then stood to point both hands toward it in a hierarchic gesture before walking around it, one hand over my eyes, peering into the darkness north, west, south, and east, then pointing to the fire once more. They conferred among themselves, a quiet gabble. The grey one pointed to the fire, "Thruf," he said. Then he turned toward the north. "Thruf," he said again, indicating something big, bigger, huge.